FireHawk Gaming at EGX Rezzed, March 12th, 2015, London

Both myself and Steve arrived at the Tobacco Dock at 11am, ready for the event, surrounded by excited gamers. One thing I could say is that maybe the event organisers could have found a better way to sign post the event – we had a bit of searching to do when we got to Shadwell DLR!

Being as the event was held in London, I can’t really fault the public transport options, and it was a mere five minute walk from the nearest DLR station.

At the Tobacco Dock itself, the event felt as though it was being held in a giant market, which made for an interesting atmosphere – we decided that we quite liked it, as it felt more intimate then the events attended previously by FHG at places like Earl’s Court. The layout itself was a bit higgledy-piggledy but it was easy to navigate with the supplied map.

We had a look in the Blizzard/PlayStation room, but surprisingly, there was nothing in that room which we found particularly interesting.

From there, we moved into the Total War room, which we found was celebrating 15 years of Total War – we had a chat to one of the guys in there, which was quite humorous, especially when he told us to avert our eyes from the games! As they were celebrating 15 years they had all the Total War games from over the years available for us to play, so we had a go at playing on Shogun 2 – Steve managed to win the fight! We then moved onto having a go at the latest Total War game, Attila. Our first impressions were that the game was very pretty and looked extremely good, the camera angles were good. There was no lagging, even when a lot was going on, on-screen and the controls handled well. Ah, and Steve won that fight as well. We also picked up some cards for Beta access for Total War Battles Kingdom, and won ourselves a free copy of Shogun 2. All in all, this was a pretty good start to our day.

Disappointingly for me, I didn’t find anything of much note in the Rising Star room, come on Rising Star, I know you can do better than that!

We then entered one of the rooms for the Indie developers, this room titled the “Indie Chillout Zone”, and this was where we found quite a bit which snagged our interest. The first game we had a go at in this room was Prison Architect, developed by Introversion Software, a game where you get to run and design your own prison. We had a go at the tutorial on offer, and had quite a bit of fun building an execution room and sending a prisoner to his death. The graphics for this game were extremely good; there was no lagging even though a lot was going on and the controls were easy to master. The game itself was very detailed – when clicking on individual prisoners, it brings up a wealth of information about them, and it looked like these backgrounds were different for each prisoner – no mean feat when there must have been at least 100 on-screen. Both myself and Steven enjoyed having a go at this game.

After mucking around killing prisoners for twenty minutes, we moved onto our next game in the room, Gratuitous Space Battles II, developed by Positech Games, of Democracy fame. Steve had a go at it, and managed to cause the game to crash in such a way that even the programmer for the game couldn’t figure out what he did to it! We had a go at a battle, the graphics were extremely detailed, and there was an awful lot going on, on-screen. After Steve broke the game, we then went into the ship design mode, there were lots of options in the design mode, and Steve got a bit excited at the fact that you can design helicopters! The game is currently in Beta form at the moment, but is slated to have a March 2015 release.

The final game we had a go at in this room was Big Pharma, developed by Twice Circled. In this strategy/business simulation game, you take on the role of a developer for new drugs and it’s up to you to balance drugs which are effective at curing diseases, but also don’t cause too many side effects, in order to turn a profit. The game itself had very much the feel of Theme Hospital as far as graphics went, although I liked it. The controls were easy to use as we played through a tutorial scenario, and the camera was good with no jarring angles. We both enjoyed the sense of humour the game had, and there was plenty of customization available, in the way you could create drugs and your production line. Ah, and the free jelly beans were good as well!

From the Indie Chillout Zone, we then went into the Versus Evil room, and had a look at their game Kyn, an ARPG which has been two years in development. The game is very detailed graphically, and it looks as though there are plenty of options. We had a play through some of the quests, and although it took a moment to figure out the controls, it was good fun, playing as a point and click adventure, however, there were a couple of camera issues, although as an alpha version, I’m sure these will be smoothed out in due course.

From here, we went into another indie developer room, where I had a go at RPG Tycoon and had a chat to the developer about the game – I wasn’t aware that RPG Tycoon was being developed by a single person, so it’s impressive how much of it there already is. The game’s about 40% completed, and there are a few rather interesting glitches. However, considering it’s not even half done yet, from what I’ve played of it, it’s shaping up to look quite good. The game has a really quirky sense of humour, and the controls are quite easy to figure out. The game utilises older, retro style graphics, but they work for the game. From what I played it was good fun, and I will certainly be keeping an eye on the game.

The final game we had a go at was I Am Bread, and I was given a funky hat to wear whilst playing the game! When we had a go, we both took part in the bagel race, where we had to race a bagel around the kitchen (makes sense in context…) and see who was the quickest (as it turns out, I was by about five seconds). We used a controller for the controls, which probably made it a bit easier, from what we’ve seen the keyboard controls make it a bit harder. The game itself looked quite good, and was chock full of bread-related puns and humour. All in all, it was worth the queue we had to line up in for the game – and that was the only time we had to queue! Ah, and we managed to crash this game as well. Again, the developer couldn’t figure out what we’d done this time either.

Overall, EGX Rezzed was a lot of fun, and we got to play a good number of different games, with a fair number now on our radar. It was certainly worth going too.